Monday, December 28, 2015

I have not been diligent in my posting. Things have been busy and complicated. The moment when reality strikes me in the face is when I realize I must write my emotions that are currently overflowing in the form of tears.

I have been working toward the same goal, going back to college. My VP finally gave me the go ahead about three weeks ago to further my education. Upon contacting the HR department, I discovered I needed to get into UAH in order for them to move head with the plan. I was under the impression the company needed to say yes before I started the process. With about a month to go, I frantically applied to the college and contacted my previous University for my transcript. With it being the holiday season, UAH closes for about a week. Down to the wire is definitely the perfect phrase for this situation. Classes begin on January 6th. UAH has not processed my college transcript I have gathered from a few phone calls, and they want a copy of my high school transcript which is going to be fun locating. At this point I need to hope things will be in order when they open back up on January 4th, but now I have an even bigger problem.

WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE?!

This question is the bane of my existence. I am the type of person who works hard even when around people who are slacking. I am the type of person who has trouble saying no and will go above and beyond for anyone. I work hard and I know my worth. Is this me being cocky? Maybe it is. Maybe I think too much of myself, but I can guarantee that my work shows how much of myself I put into it.

Since about September, my work life has been extremely busy. Recently, my company has been utilizing two of us in my department for extra tasks and basically Tier 1 level technical support. A new product was launching here and I was brought in to develop the processes for Tier 1 level technical support of the product. This new experience taught me so much in the business world. I received a lot of acknowledgement around the company for the work and it felt really good. With the loss of my coworker to the new job position in my last post, I was brought in to take her place in our emergency replacement program. This was a position I had been avoiding due to the amount of work involved, including on call work, but I knew this was the next step for me. While still working on the new product I began learning the process for the new tasks I was taking on. Overwhelmed is a good way to describe my state of mind at the time. My stress level was high and I was not handling it well. My fuse was short and when something went array my freak out level would sky rocket. These two new jobs were piled on top of all the other things I handle on a day to day basis and to top it off, my coworker and I received another new responsibility that changed everything. A product we have been supporting has reached the End of Life. The issue with this is, we still have a lot of people using them and we have a lot of service plans extending past the end of support date. Tier 1 support just turned into Tier 1 support for the first time. We knew this was the goal however we did not expect it to be so sudden and so challenging.Just when we think there cannot be something else they will want us to do, we get more to do.

Now I can explain the reason for my abundance of emotions. Today was the day of the yearly review and end of the year raises at work. I am a dreamer. I live in a fantasy world where I make expectations and have a positive attitude. I am beginning to think this is my downfall. Going into my supervisor's office, I knew there would not be much negative feedback. Things have been going really well. I make few mistakes and work hard. However, I feel overworked and underpaid. The environment I work in is changing and building however I feel like the work load and compensation do not change with it. I am also beginning a new level of support. My coworker and I have taken on many tasks and opened up the call center to be able to support things on a Tier 1 level that was not available before. In my head, I expected management to recognize this and compensate us on a level we deserved. I was wrong.

I should be happy. I have a job. I make enough to survive. I did receive a raise and I do appreciate it but I feel like for the work we are doing this was not correct. I received double last year than I did this year. I did not do nearly as much work last year as I did this year. How do I move forward working as hard as I have been working when I know my job will be even more challenging in the year to come and I will not be promoted to the level I should for what I do?

Decisions have to be made within the next week:
-Do I go back to school? I will have to stay with this company for 3 years at the least. I will have to accept the mounting work as it comes and deal with my emotional response to it. I will have to work 40 hours a week while taking classes, basically having me working from 8 AM to 7 PM through the week and on call every other week.
-Do I look for a new job? What would I do? I cannot get a job with the government because I am not applicable to their programs. I could get a teaching certificate. I could do event planning. I could do any number of things but what do I want to do? I would be giving up my security with this company. I would be changing my life entirely. I would be giving up the possibility of going back to school. How do I even do that?

I am so lost. I know I can do anything I set my mind to. I just cannot seem to set my mind to anything. I forget what I am capable of and just want to curl up under my bed covers and forget the world is spinning for a while. Making a decision that will effect the rest of your life is too big for me to wrap my head around. I keep thinking I'm going to make the wrong one and ruin everything. This next week will be filled with a lot of thinking and discovering who I am and what I am worth as an employee as well as myself.